In the first installment of our new poker recap series – The Poker Review – we take a look at the controversy behind PokerStars’ newest poker offering Beat The Clock, find out whether Martin Derbyshire still has a job (spoiler: nope), and check in on the latest happenings around the poker industry.

Martin Derbyshire is fired after controversial PokerNews Article.

Poker professionals are relatively smart people who choose greed, laziness and self delusion as their path.

This was the opinion of Martin Derbyshire in his last piece for PokerNews; which has since been removed, re-edited, re-published, then quickly removed again. Naturally this caused a backlash within the community, with Asher Conniff’s reply summing up what a lot of people were thinking:

And once again after his dismissal from the PokerNews staff with an almost-made-it-through-the-apology apology, which concludes with him telling us he’s the real victim.

Tough sell, Marty…real tough sell.

What do you guys think? Did Derbyshire deserve to get the boot or does his gross misuse of click-bait fundamentals deserve another chance?

Beat The Clock or Beat The Rake?

PokerStars new poker variant “Beat The Clock”, a 5-minute Zoom/Hyper-Turbo 48-man poker tournament with 10% rake, is understandably not being well-received by the professional and aspiring professional poker player communities.

The face of Pokerstars Daniel Negreanu unsurprisingly continues to defend Amaya’s every-move (presumably from his bed again), whilst other players such as Ike Haxton & Doug Polk claim the game is a rake-trap that is downright unethical.

“Beat the Clock” is a rake trap designed to remove casual players from skill games and rake them for 12 MTT’s per hour @RealKidPoker

A second poker event is shutdown mid-tourney on Chinese mainland

An Asian Poker League event just outside of Shanghai has been shut down by local authorities on day 1 of the first tournament on a week-long schedule. Reasons for the stoppage remain unclear, although it appears a “turf war” of sorts had broken out among local authorities about how the event was to be run . Gambling remains illegal in China, along with poker cash games, so tournaments appear to be the only chance to grow poker in the largest country in the world. Organizers of future events will have a extremely tough road ahead of them and this is yet another concern about the growth of poker.

ICYMI: Mike Sexton, Joe Ingram & Doug Polk

Mike Sexton, the voice of WPT for 15 years has finally cracked it & won his first WPT title at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal. Already a Poker Hall of Famer, this was the sweetest of victories for Mike, coming back from a 10-1 chip deficit to take down the title, proving the old adage #NeverGiveUp.

For himself, Ingram must be exhausted because he seems to be everywhere these days! The very next day after completing the Sexton interview above, Ingram launched the debut episode of his new show with Doug Polk – Table Talk With Polk & Papi.

The first episode put the clock on a number of subjects in the style of ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption and the boys shared their thoughts on stories such as Borgata’s counter-claim against Phil Ivey (which includes a whopping $249K in comps!), Gus Hansen’s return to online poker, and some sage poker advice from none other than Donald Trump. You can check out the complete first episode below and make sure to check out future episodes by visiting www.DougPolk.tvevery Wednesday at 2pm EST or visiting Ingram’s YouTube channel shortly thereafter.

Until next time, may your multipliers be maxed and your opponents recreational!